Author: David Hebblethwaite

Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo (2010)

9th July 2012 / / 10 Comments

Today’s the day when Simon and Gav of The Readers podcast focus on Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo in their Summer Book Club series. I joined them as a guest in the discussion part of the episode, which you can hear after an interview with Lord Gav’s and Simon’s own thoughts. And here’s a review of the book from me…

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Redemption in Indigo is Karen Lord’s interpretation/extension of a Senegalese folktale. We begin with the gluttonous Ansige tracking down his wife Paama, who had left him; after being tricked and humiliated three times by djombi (spirit creatures, ‘gods’), Ansige takes his leave. That’s where the traditional folktale ends. Lord then continues Paama’s story by having a djombi present her with the Chaos Stick, an artefact which can manipulate the small possibilities of chaos – and Paama uses it with some skill. But the Chaos Stick was stolen from another djombi, the indigo lord, who rather wants it back; he takes Paama on a journey to show her the dangers of the chaos stick – but ends up learning lessons of his own as well.

Lord’s novel is written as though being spoken aloud by a storyteller, and this unknown narrator frequently interjects to address the reader directly; as here, when a djombi (in the form of a spider) makes itself known to human characters for the first time:

I know your complaint already. You are saying, how do two grown men begin to see talking spiders after only three glasses of spice spirit? My answer to that is twofold. First, you have no idea how strong spice spirit is made in that region. Second, you have no idea how talking animals operate. Do you think they would have survived long if they regularly made themselves known? For that matter, do you think an arachnid with mouthparts is capable of articulating the phrase “I am a pawnbroker” in any known human language? Think! These creatures do not truly talk, nor are they truly animals, but they do encounter human folk, and when they do, they carefully take with them all memory of the meeting. (pp. 20-1)

I just love this: it says to readers that they must accept the book on its own terms, must take the time to appreciate how it works. This kind of interjection would normally derail a novel completely, but it’s integral to the project of Redemption in Indigo; and, once you get into the rhythm of the book, I think it’s nigh-on impossible not to be carried along.

Redemption in Indigo balances traditional roots with what feels a very contemporary take on the folktale form.For one thing, Lord includes modern details – antacid chews, buses – in a setting that nevertheless seems timeless; it doesn’t feel forced or strange that she has done this – it’s just that the specific temporal markers are largely irrelevant. Redemption in Indigo also feels contemporary because it has underpinnings in quantum physics. That’s the level on which the Chaos Stick works, and the indigo lord is keen to show Paama that tiny changes can have far-reaching – and sometimes unintended – consequences. It’s an archetypal ‘character learns better’ scenario, but placed in a scientific framework.

So the plot of Lord’s novel is all about choices and having multiple options; but this theme is embedded even deeper in the text. The narrator is at pains to point out that this story has a moral, but rather less eager be specific what that moral is. The tale is left open, in terms of what we are to think about it (‘I have no way of knowing which of these characters will most capture your attention and sympathy,’ pp. 265-6) and its ending (‘Do I have more stories to tell? There are always more stories,’ p. 266) – but even that isn’t left to stand, as the epilogue brings a more novelistic conclusion. As in quantum theory, multiple possibilities exist within the text, yet to collapse into something definitive.

Redemption in Indigo is a novel of contradictions: written yet spoken; defiantly ragged but carefully controlled; a book that swears to your face it’s didactic whilst telling you to nothing but make up your own mind. It embraces yet subverts the folktale form by giving its comic beginning a certain dramatic weight by the end, and turning its characters (both human and djombi) into rounded individuals who can learn from and teach each other in equal measure. And it’s enormous fun to read; heartily recommended.

Elsewhere
Karen Lord’s website
Some other reviews of Redemption in Indigo: Simon’s review on Savidge Reads; Victoria Hoyle for Strange Horizons; Bibliophile Stalker; Culturally Disoriented.

The Readers Summer Book Club

7th July 2012 / / 0 Comments

Just a quick note to say that, on Monday 9 July, you’ll be able to hear me as a guest panellist on The Readers podcast, discussing Karen Lord‘s novel Redemption in Indigo with regular hosts Gav Pugh and Simon Savidge. The Readers is a great podcast, and I’d like to thank Simon and Gav for giving me the opportunity to take part; it was great fun to record, and I hope that will come across in the discussion.

I’ll post a link to the podcast on Monday, along with a review of Redemption in Indigo (spoiler: I really liked it).

Keith Ridgway, Hawthorn & Child (2012)

5th July 2012 / / 13 Comments

Reading this book carried with it a certain sense of entering another blogger’s territory. John Self and I don’t share much in the way of reading tastes (though he does appreciate Christopher Priest); but he is one of the best, most insightful book bloggers around. One of the authors he’s always enthusing about is Keith Ridgway; so, when the opportunity arose to read Ridgway’s latest novel, I went for it.

Hawthorn & Child is just the sort of book I had in mind when I talked last month about coming to appreciate different literary aesthetics; its incoherence would have left me cold a few years ago, but now I can see more clearly what the book is doing. The title characters are police detectives, and therefore characters whom we would generally expect to bring coherence to the world – but Ridgway creates a study of lives refusing to cohere.

Structurally, the novel is fragmented: a series of story-chapters linked primarily (sometimes solely) by the presence of Hawthorn and Child, who even then are sometimes only minor characters. The first chapter sets the tone: the detectives investigate the shooting of Daniel Field a young investment bank employee, though Hawthorn’s mind is clearly wandering, and he behaves oddly enough that one has cause to question whether he’s up to the job (when he and Child visit the victim’s home, Hawthorn even ends up climbing into Field’s bed). Hawthorn makes notes, but of seemingly random things (such as ‘pools of light/pools of shadow‘ [p.19], describing street lights shining on the ground), and his other attempts at ‘detection’ also come across as empty rituals. The victim says he saw a car when he got shot, but the search for it comes to nothing, and there’s a strong suggestion that the car exists only in recollections and interviews (‘Just a shape,’ one character remembers seeing. ‘The back of a car. You know. The idea of a car’ [p. 20]). Ultimately, anything on which the investigation may be able to hang evaporates when looked at more closely.

For the second chapter, we shift to the viewpoint of a gangster’s driver, and it comes as quite a shock to see Hawthorn appear competent and efficient to the outside world. It creates a nagging sense that we can’t really rely on anything in the novel; for example, perhaps Child (whom we only ever see externally) is putting up a front as much as Hawthorn – we’ll just never know.

Throughout Hawthorn & Child, possibilities and realities are glimpsed, then disappear. Attempts to impose some sort of shape on the world – such as one narrator’s paranoid political conspiracy theory, or a manuscript purporting to describe a wainscot society of wolves in the interstices of the city – come to nothing. Even a character like the gangster Mishazzo, who’s in the background of several chapters and whom we see more clearly, is still ultimately elusive. Ridgway tells all in dextrous prose that consists largely of grimy details and sentence-fragments, occasionally bursting into more flowing narratives which evoke different kinds of character.

Hawthorn & Child is a tale of mysteries – and lives – unsolved. Its final vision is of the two detectives breakfasting in Child’s house:

They ate in silence and the windows rattled as a bus went by, and in the time they shared there was no time. No time at all. [Hawthorn] could remember nothing of what had gone before, and he could think of no possible future. (p. 282)

No moment of triumph here, but the world petering out into stasis. It’s a fitting end to Ridgway’s novel – whilst also, of course, being no end at all.

Elsewhere
Keith Ridgway’s website
‘Marching Songs’ – an extract from Hawthorn & Child

Book notes: Rosy Thornton and Nikita Lalwani

2nd July 2012 / / 3 Comments

Rosy Thornton, Ninepins (2012)

Cambridge academic Laura Blackwood and her twelve-year-old daughter Beth live in Ninepins, a former tollhouse build atop a dyke out in the fens. To help make ends meet, Laura has been renting out the adjoining old pumphouse. As the novel begins, her latest tenant arrives: Willow Tyler, a seventeen-year-old care-leaver. Laura is wary of taking Willow on, because she’s younger than previous tenant, and there are whispers of arson in her past – but she wants to give the girl a chance, and Social Services will pay more rent than would a private tenant. But the subsequent months bring problems with the weather,Willow’s estranged mother, and Beth and her friends.

The sense of place is vivid in Rosy Thornton’s new novel – the damp atmosphere of the fens and the remoteness of Ninepins come straight off the page. The dislocated setting provides a fitting background and mirror to the story: Laura starts to feel increasingly distanced from Beth, who’s now getting into trouble in ways she never previously did; and Willow is trying (though not always succeeding) to leave her mother behind. Besides this, the whole book moves along nicely, all adding up to an engaging read.

Elsewhere
Rosy Thornton’s website
Thornton writes about the novel on Sally Zigmond’s blog
Some other reviews of Ninepins: A Bookish Affair; Book Dilettante; Kate Phillips for For Books’ Sake.

Nikita Lalwani, The Village (2012)

Anglo-Indian director Ray Bhullar arrives at the Indian village of Ashwer to make a documentary for the BBC. Ashwer’s inhabitants are mostly ordinary folk, but for one detail: a member of each family has killed someone. This village is an open prison, whose inmates are allowed to live with their families; it’s had no reoffenders, and only one (unsuccessful) escape attempt. Ray’s aim is to make a film that will allow her British audience to appreciate the people of Ashwer as they really are; but her white colleagues – producer Serena and (ex-offender) presenter Nathan – are not quite so noble-minded.

The ethics of documentary-making are at the centre of Nikita Lalwani’s second novel, as Ray tries to find the balance between telling a good story and not exploiting her subjects. It’s no easy task, because she finds herself inadvertently getting closer to certain villagers than she’d intended. And Ray’s own ethical sense is not entirely clear-cut – she’d love to be able to film people completely candidly, but that would mean not having their consent. Lalwani documents the thorny tangle of these issues, building up to a couple of tense set-pieces at novel’s end.

Running in parallel with this is Ray’s personal struggle with herself – her sense that, despite her Indian heritage, she may not fit in with the culture of Ashwer as much as she’d thought. It adds another layer of complexity to a novel which ends in a resolution which feels as much a compromise on Ray’s part as a step forward for her.

Elsewhere
Nikita Lalwani’s website
Interview with Lalwani at The Asian Writer
Some other reviews of The Village: Maia Nikitina for Bookmunch; Laura Reading Books; Arifa Akbar for the Independent.

Marking the half-year

1st July 2012 / / 0 Comments

It’s July already, but let’s not dwell on that too much. Instead, here’s a look back at some of my posts from earlier in 2012 that you may have missed:

Selected features

Selected reviews

June wrap-up

30th June 2012 / / 2 Comments

Book of the Month

Top of the pile this month was the second novel by a writer who is clearly going places. Jonathan Lee’s Joy is a great feat of of characterisation and voice which explores what drove a successful lawyer to commit suicide in a very public way, through the contrasting perspectives of herself and her colleague. It’s a book that brings to mind Rupture by Simon Lelic – in terms of quality as well as structure and subject.

Reviews

Features

55 Reading Questions

29th June 2012 / / 11 Comments

I found this meme on Story in a Teacup; I may be coming to it a little belatedly, but I liked the questions, so I thought I’d respond. 55 questions; 55 answers – here goes…

1. Favourite childhood book? I cut my reading teeth, as it were, on Fighting Fantasy and Terry Pratchett books.

2. What are you reading right now? You Came Back by Christopher Coake.

3. What books do you have on request at the library? Nothing at present.

4. Bad book habit? Acquiring books faster than I can read them.

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library? Ghost Story by Toby Litt; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark; State of Wonder by Ann Patchett.

Continue reading

Book notes: Route’s Next Great Novelist… and William Boyd’s short fiction

27th June 2012 / / 3 Comments

Sophie Coulombeau, Rites (2012)

Last year, the Pontefract-based publisher Route announced its ‘Next Great Novelist’ award, which would lead to the publication of a book by a new novelist under the age of 30. Sophie Coulombeau won, and Rites is her winning novel. Told in the form of interview transcripts, it is the story of four Manchester teenagers who made a pact to lose their virginity to each other in 1997, an incident which gained notoriety (for reasons unspecified as the book begins); in the present day, the then-teenagers – and other characters involved – look back on that time, and leave the reader to construct exactly what happened.

Coulombeau’s great strength in Rites is in how she controls the flow of information, and plays with and against readers’ expectations. When her opening narrator Damien suggests (in his pitch-perfect, insufferable voice) that only some people think what his teenage self did was ‘terrible’, we’re immediately put in mind that our initial assumptions about events may come to be overturned – and so it proves, but subtly, as ‘blame’ passes between the characters, and we realise that everyone has slightly different memories of the past. So there’s a wonderful sense of uncertainty – the feeling that, even when we think we know everything, perhaps we don’t after all. Add to this some insightful observations – on growing up, falling in love, and more besides – and you have a fine debut novel.

William Boyd, Fascination (2004)

The other week, I decided it was about time I read something by William Boyd – but where to start with such a prolific author? I asked for suggestions on Twitter, and the most common response by far was his 1987 novel The New Confessions. I looked for that book next time I was in the library, but they didn’t have it; instead, I came away with Fascination, one of Boyd’s short story collections – and it wasn’t the best place to start.

Most of Boyd’s protagonists in these stories experience sudden (and often unhealthy) desire for another person; this can lead to some effective moments, as in ‘The Woman on the Beach with a Dog’, whose married main character pursues a woman he encounters, but has no idea what to do after he’s done so. But, too often, I get a sense that, take away Boyd’s formal conceits – a story told in the form of a diner’s notes on a week’s lunches, for example; or one where individual scenes are headed with video operations (past-set scenes labelled ‘rewind’, and so on) – and there’s not much left to make the tales stand out.

I certainly get enough of a sense from Fascination that Boyd is a writer worth reading: ‘The Ghost of a Bird’ is a poignant portrait of a convalescing soldier recovering his memory, and struggling to distinguish between reality and fantasy. The title story draws neat parallels between two relationships with women in a journalist’s past and present. ‘The Mind/Body Problem’ deploys its theme in interesting ways, as a philosophy student makes fake lotions and potions for a female bodybuilder at his parents’ gym and in a sense ‘remakes’ her as a person when her attitude changes. But I think I should have started with one of Boyd’s novels, so I’ll have to keep an eye out for The New Confessions.

Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, The Long Earth (2012)

24th June 2012 / / 3 Comments

On the face of it, Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter may not be a particularly obvious writing partnership; their distinctive brands of comic fantasy and hard science fiction might seem incompatible. But, then again, Pratchett’s interest in science often comes through in his work; and both writers share an ability to create grand fantastic visions – whether Baxter’s evocations of the vastnesses of space and time, or the large-scale comic set-pieces which crown Pratchett’s best novels. So the prospect of a co-written work from them is intriguing, and now we have The Long Earth, the first novel in a projected duology– though the end result is more frustrating than anything.

A few years hence, more or less everyone has access to a ‘stepper’, a device that enables travel through the chain of parallel worlds known as the Long Earth. There are certain practical concerns – worlds can only be accessed in sequence; iron cannot be carried between them; and each ‘step’ induces fifteen minutes of debilitating nausea. Moreover, most of the parallel worlds are empty, minor climatic and geographic variations on our own prehistoric Earth. But none of this stops people making the journey between worlds, to exploit the resources there, or to start their lives anew.

It takes a while for The Long Earth to coalesce, as a number of plot strands present themselves at the outset, and it’s not clear initially which will be the main focus. But it’s quite exhilarating, first to begin the story at a point where the notion of parallel worlds and the stepping technology are well established (and, even though Pratchett and Baxter do fill in the back story, they don’t especially dwell on it), then to have this sense of a raw story coming together as the pages turn.

The novel eventually settles on a main narrative thread, concerning Joshua Valienté, one of a select few able to step between worlds unaided and with no ill effects. The existence of this ability is unknown to most, but not to Lobsang, a supercomputer who claims to have once been a Tibetan motorcycle mechanic. The ‘transEarth Insititute’ enlists Joshua to be Lobsang’s escort on an airship voyage to the far reaches of the Long Earth, where they discover the threat that will presumably become the key focus of the second volume.

In terms of its authors’ other work, The Long Earth – as Adam Roberts rightly suggests in the Guardian – is much closer to Baxter’s usual territory than Pratchett’s. There’s not much humour in the novel, and what there is – such as the comic-cut biker nun, Sister Agnes – feels somewhat out of place. But the book’s interplay of fantasy and science fiction is interesting; structurally, the Long Earth could be seen as a scientific riposte to the traditional fantasy multiverse – steppers have no prospect of a swashbuckling adventure through outlandish worlds, just a systematic trudge through near-identical Earths. (Joshua and Lobsang also discover a rational origin for the idea of elves and trolls.)

The thing is, though, that – almost by definition – this is not a set-up that lends itself naturally to drama: there’s nothing much for characters to act against , and most problems can be solved simply by stepping to the next Earth. The novel never manages to find enough drama to compensate for this: Lobsang controls the central journey to such a degree that Joshua’s main function as protagonist is to witness rather than act; and the subplots exploring other aspects of the Long Earth recede too far into the background to carry enough weight in the book as a whole.

Overall, I’m inclined to agree with Paula at The Broke and the Bookish that The Long Earth feels more like a beginning than a tale that stands alone; there’s too strong a sense of pieces being moved into place for a game to be played out in the next volume. Pratchett and Baxter explore some interesting ideas of the different paths terrestrial life might have taken, and how modern humans might respond to vast new wildernesses; but the book has really only just got going as it ends.

(A shorter version of this review appears at We Love This Book.)

Elsewhere
Terry Pratchett’s website
Stephen Baxter’s website
Some other reviews of The Long Earth: The Literary Omnivore; Baltimore Reads; Birth of a New Witch.

Book notes: Nell Leyshon and Beryl Bainbridge

21st June 2012 / / 9 Comments

Nell Leyshon, The Colour of Milk (2012)

You can read The Colour of Milk in one sitting, and I think doing so is the best way to experience this short, intense work. Set in 1830, it’s the account of Mary, a young farm girl who has acquired a measure of literacy and now sets out her story in her own halting prose. One summer, Mary is sent to work at the local vicarage, looking after the vicar’s sick wife; it’s clear from her tone that something bad has happened, but the full picture doesn’t emerge until the end.

Nell Leyshon paints a portrait of how circumstance can create a prison. It’s the middle of the Industrial Revolution, a time of great change; but that’s happening a long way from Mary’s world in rural Somerset. She’s quick-witted, but not educated; in another time or place, she might have flourished, but Leyshon shows how Mary’s situation conspires against that. Mary’s literacy is a form of release for her – she keeps emphasising that this is her book, her writing, her words – which lends a bittersweet note to the ending of this fine novel.

Elsewhere
Some other reviews of The Colour of Milk: Prose and Cons Book Club; The Little Reader Library; writingaboutbooks; For Books’ Sake.

Beryl Bainbridge, An Awfully Big Adventure (1989)

Annabel’s hosting a Beryl Bainbridge reading week this week; since Bainbridge’s work is one of the gaps in my reading history, I thought I’d join in. But I hope I was just unlucky with the book I chose, because I didn’t get along with An Awfully Big Adventure as well as I hoped  to.

It’s Liverpool in 1950, and young Stella Bradshaw, who lives with her aunt and uncle, dreams of a life in the theatre, something that’s not typical of girls with her background (‘People like us don’t go to plays,’ says Aunt Lily, ‘[l]et alone act in them.’ ‘But she’s not one of us, is she?’ replies Uncle Vernon). Stella gets her wish, joining Meredith Potter’s repertory theatre company backstage; she develops an (unreciprocated) crush on Potter himself, and, as the months go by, gains acting work, but also the kind of attention she could do without.

In many ways, An Awfully Big Adventure is Stella’s novel – certainly its resolution hinges on revelations about her character – but, in terms of focus, the book is much more an ensemble piece, and our view of Stella is often distanced (necessarily so, but still). I wonder if these latter qualities didn’t prevent me from truly engaging with Bainbridge’s novel – I felt it was that bit too distanced, too broad, to work for me. But the ending is as powerful as I could wish, one of the strongest narrative jolts I’ve experienced in some time.

Elsewhere
Some other reviews of An Awfully Big Adventure: Book Around the Corner; Harriet Devine’s Blog; The Octogon; Jo Wyndham Ward.

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